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Here are the key recommendations from the president's oil spill commission:
- Congress and the Administration should create an independent safety agency to oversee all aspects of offshore drilling safety (including both operational and occupational safety).
- U.S. offshore drilling regulations and enforcement practices should be the most advanced in the world. These new regulations should be, at a minimum, at least as stringent as those regulations in peer oil-producing nations (such as Norway and the United Kingdom).
- Broader consultations among federal agencies, including the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), prior to leasing and exploration will help identify and address risks.
- Industry should be required to demonstrate how their processes and procedures will better manage risk to achieve safer outcomes. After exploration has begun, industry should be required to constantly update its risk management plans to reflect actual experience..
- Drilling operators should be financially responsible for the consequences of failure. The current $75 million cap on liability for offshore facility accidents is totally inadequate and places the economic risk on the backs of the victims and the taxpayers. The cap should be raised significantly to place the burden of catastrophic failure on those who will gain the economic rewards, and to compensate innocent victims.
- The oil and gas industry must adopt a culture of safety.
- The oil and gas industry should establish a "Safety Institute."
- Spill response planning by both government and industry must improve.
- The government must develop in-house expertise to effectively oversee well-containment operations and to accurately estimate flow rates following a blowout. Industry must be required to develop well-containment technologies that are rapidly deployable and must demonstrate their effectiveness in deepwater.
- The penalties paid by BP and other parties responsible for the oil spill should be primarily devoted to Gulf restoration. The Gulf will continue to be under stress as energy development continues. Congress should dedicate 80 percent of any Clean Water Act civil and criminal penalties to long-term restoration of the Gulf of Mexico in partnership with the states.
*** UPDATE *** NBC's Kelly O'Donnell updates with this statement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
"I commend the bipartisan panel for its work. Its findings and recommendations are largely in line with a Democratic plan to ensure that taxpayers are never again on the hook for the damages caused by BP or any other oil company's catastrophic missteps. Unfortunately that proposal was blocked last year by Senate Republicans.
"The White House, Congress and even the oil industry must work together to pass bipartisan legislation that will prevent and contain a similar environmental disaster and support continued efforts to restore the environment and economy of the Gulf Coast. We must make whole the fishermen, business owners and families whose lives and livelihoods have been altered.
"Congress must take action this year to prevent another catastrophic spill through smart regulation, and by giving regulators the tools and resources they need to do their jobs effectively. We need to ensure safe and responsible use of our very limited offshore oil reserves. But we must also quickly develop our homegrown clean energy resources, such as the solar, wind and geothermal power available in Nevada and around the country, in an environmentally sensible way. This will create jobs and lessen our dangerous reliance on oil."
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These all seem fairly reasonable to me. If we could get some sort of bill that does not have a bunch of addendums and add ons, maybe we could get some bipartisan legislation through.
But I doubt it!
What's reasonable got to do, got to do with it ....
Not as much as money does!
Not that we don't need some restrictions, but we should probably go through the existing laws and see which ones are not being enforced to their full extent.
Every time something bad happens, doesn't mean we need a whole new crop of rules and regulations, sometimes we need to go through and see what we have already and make sure they are already being enforced. That might allow for more time to get jobs rolling in this country.
In fact, a review of all the laws in this land might make it easier to rid ourselves of those laws that no longer are politically correct. Such as hanging cattle thieves in Texas:)
FR: The oil and gas industry must adopt a culture of safety.
The safety could start once Dick Cheney is prosecuted. Take this underground un- prosecuted criminal out of society for all the Halliburton oil that gushed from a hole in the bottom of the sea .
Halliburton killed soldiers in Iraq with faulty electricity.
The world would be a safer place.
Boring Bev. What crime did Cheney do? Now for the faulty electric, yes, they should be fined.
and the world would be a safer place without liberals. No, I retract that statement. You guys actually create my daily humor.
I Well Say THat A bunch of Socialest in Washington DC are trying to kill Americas way of life.
Two words:
Spell check!
ALL republicans and Democrats are doing these days is adding credibility to the SINGLE PARTY SYSTEM.
I'm certainly not in favor of such a system, but by debating things to death, not taking action that is aligned with the people, and the inordinate amount of time it takes to get common sense things done! Washington is doing just that! Special Interests rule the Hill and the USA....
If I am another country and the US goes there to set up a "Democracy", I would point to all of this crap and say...you WANT us to be LIKE you?? HAHA gtf outta here....idiots.
Obama is killing us with restrictions that he knows nothing about.
Name them.
get a clue newday, obama isn't omnipotent, do you think he knows all the details of all the regulations currently on the books?
As a southern boy who used to love eating raw gulf oysters and big juicey royal red shrimp with his son, all I have to say is,
YAY!!
Because we don't eat gulf seafood anymore..
Let's see, the President has exposure to oil spills......experience in auto manufacturing....... a financial services industry background.........an understanding of the health care industry.......now why doesn't he move forward to create a viable oil drilling business while helping the rest of us keep the cost of gas below $4 - $5 range?
Every sector of the economy depends on affordable energy -- every business owner, every worker, every household and family member, and every consumer depends on affordable, reliable supplies of oil and natural gas.
The six month drilling moratorium, caused the drilling platforms to move to more lucrative foreign areas. In addition, there are new regulations and oversight initiatives of existing wells considered to be put in place since the BP disaster, resulting in decreased domestic oil sources.
The current administration was unable to get a cap and trade bill through congress, so now they are using the EPA to place new limits on industrial emissions, and bypassing congress to advance his own agenda. This is particularly harmful to the oil industry. I’m giving our current President a strong benefit of doubt as to his intentions, and believing he is honestly trying to do the right thing. Perhaps he believes if we have no other choice we will develop new sources of green energy. Sort of a shared sacrifice thing. The problem with this theory is, when did you ever see a president sacrifice? We currently have no existing alternatives. Try going to the grocery store with wind or solar energy.
Every major industrial nation in the world depends on oil. If it could be done otherwise, America would be the first. Americans have consistently been the brightest and most innovative people on earth. I'm all for making oil production safer, but I'm afraid there are those that wish to put oil out of business.
Our economy is in the toilet, in part because of our high energy costs, and lack of jobs. If we open areas that are currently off limits to development, we could create more than 500,000 jobs throughout the economy. Domestic oil production could provide numerous high paying jobs, lessen our dependence on foreign sources of oil, and lessen our costs.